Some People Just Need Assassinating
by Emantsal
Summary: Ryder Cousland has learned many things from Zevran, mostly how to be an assassin.  Now she has a new mission in life...  Please leave a review if you enjoy my ramblings...
1. Chapter 1

Standard Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except the insanity inside my head!

Thank you to the good people at Bioware for such an awesome game that has inspired so many people to put down the game and take up the quill and paper, er, I mean, computer and word processing software! This has been sitting on my hard drive for at least 7 months now (along with about 5 others). Finally decided to share.

Thank you for taking the time to read. If you like, please leave a review, they are greatly appreciated.

Ryder Cousland snuggled closer into the warmth of the man sleeping beside her. At least now he actually slept. At first he'd just dozed in that twilight between wakefulness and sleep. It had taken several months of traveling together and fighting as a team to gain enough trust so that he now actually slept.

Trust was something she herself had a hard time giving, so she hadn't pressed him, only tried to keep the group focused on the main goal, killing darkspawn. The more they bonded against a common enemy, the less they might backstab each other. Of course Alistair and Morrigan constantly snipped at each other and Sten always challenged her authority and decisions. Alistair was often unhappy with her choices, and no one seemed to trust the assassin, well almost on one. Ser Pickles had liked him from the first, and that had been enough for her. She often trusted the mabari war hound's character judgment over her own.

The more she talked to him, the more she was amazed that he could trust anyone at all. Given his background it was a miracle he'd even survived his childhood, let alone survived the Crow's inhuman torture, so prettily dressed up as "training". Sometimes she wanted to hunt them down, the ones who'd tried to destroy his soul, and unleash hell on them. One day she just might…

"More nightmares, my dear?" a sleepy voice warmed her ear where his lips pressed softly against her skin. "You are suddenly so tense, so full of anger…" Callused fingers stroked her shoulder and arm, moving up to thread through her hair.

"No, just adding to my list of people who need assassinating," she replied, already feeling the tension flow out of her.

"It would seem I have created a monster, yes? Who now had angered you enough to earn a place on this list of death you carry close to your heart?"

"If I tell you, you'll probably get all weirded out, so…"

"Oh, now you've aroused my curiosity," he sighed into her hair, raising his head up to gaze down at her with sleepy amber eyes.

"That's not all that's aroused," she replied, turning to face him and pressing butterfly kisses along his jaw. At the junction of her thighs the evidence of his arousal teased her, and she slid a pale, silken leg up over his hip, pulling him closer to the proof of her desire….

As he pushed slowly into her waiting heat, she sighed and squirmed to get closed, to become filled with him, one with him.

Her lips found his for a slow, unhurried sip, then moved to gently nibble and suck on a tender earlobe, a tongue tracing the shell of a sensitive ear. She was rewarded with an earthy growl as he rolled over and settled between her open thighs, still buried in her slick heat.

Maker, how she loved it, the weight, the feel of his body pressing down on her. She wrapped her long legs around his slender waist and arched to take his thrusts deeper. Ryder moaned as his thrust picked up pace and strength, soon crying out as his hips pounded into her.

Her lover leaned down close, wrapping his arms around her, and with the lithe dexterity of a master rogue and the practiced ease of a move done over and over again, he quickly rolled them over so that she was now on top. She squeezed his hips between her thighs as she began to move.

A full moon outside illuminated the space inside with a gentle glow and Rider couldn't help but gaze at his beautiful face as she rocked up and down on his thick cock. His fingers dug into the flesh of her hips as he gripped her and sought to seat himself deeper in her slickness. She traced the tattoo on a cheek with a slender finger before moving her hand to his muscled chest, teasing a taut nipple.

Ryder clinched her muscles as she moved up and down, and undulated back and forth. He pulled her down, crushing her to him, his mouth devouring her as he continued thrusting upward. Ryder pulled her lips away and traced the tattoo on his check with her tongue. She feathered kisses over his face and jaw line to an ear. That always got her delicious little moans and gasps as she licked, sucked and nibbled her way.

"You know what I want," she breathed into his mouth, slipping away to get on her hands and knees. He moved behind her and slid home, grabbing her shoulders to pull her upright. His lips found the pulse at her throat and he sucked the flesh as he hammered into her. Calloused hands palmed aching, heavy breasts, lovingly playing with nipples puckered with desire. One hand descended lower, over a taught flat belly to slip between the silken folds of her sex, finding the hidden jewel nestled there. Expert fingers stroked and caressed the tight bud. Ryder threw her head back, her breath coming in short little gasps and moans as she came undone, shudders coursing through her body as he took her to completion. He turned her face to his and their breath became one as he empted himself into her.

In a tangle of sweat slicked limbs and sated bodies, Ryder snuggled closer to the man she'd come to care too much for. He'd come to mean everything to her. It was dangerous, this feeling. Did she love him? Is this what love felt like? She had so many unnamed feelings… She only knew that with him she felt whole, complete.


	2. Chapter 2

Zevran knew he was fighting a loosing battle with himself. He was pretty sure he was hopelessly in love with the woman nestled within the circle of his arms. And as much as it scared the hell out of him, the thought of his life without her scared him more. The Crow Masters had attempted to strip every emotion from him. Crow trainees were beaten, tortured, and debased until they were little more than highly skilled puppets, killing on command, humanity and the ability to feel all but burned away. Once before he'd let them win, had let them strip everything from him…

He thought he'd loved Rinna, and in his own way, he really had. He'd been taught for so long that love made you weak, that love was an illusion that blinded you to the truth. With Rinna, he'd loved her beauty, her laugh, her skill as a killer,… Looking back now he saw that he'd loved that she was exactly like him, they understood each other on a level few others could claim. Loving her… looking back it had been so easy, he hadn't had to work at it, hadn't had to reach outside himself. It hadn't hurt any less, the betrayal, his part in her death, the aftermath… And after… The Crow master had told him she was nothing, he was nothing… Only tools to be used, then discarded when they could no longer do their job. It had almost broken him. And then… she crashed into his life and he'd never been the same.

Ryder was in many ways the exact opposite of Rinna. Where Rinna had been a dark haired Antivan beauty, his Warden was a pale, golden goddess. Where Rinna had been trained by the Crow's to be cold, to thrive on murder and death, something she'd excelled at, his Warden lost a little of her soul every time someone died. Darkspawn were no problem, but even battling Loghain's hired men could cause days of depression. They were all just pawns in a larger game, she'd explained. The one's moving the pieces on the game board were the real evil that needed to be rooted out and destroyed.

It was after he'd begun teaching her the skills he'd learned as an Antivan Crow assassin that she'd begun keeping the "List of Death", as he called it. She'd explained it one night as they lay entwined after making slow, languid love.

"You told me, once, that you believed some people just needed to be assassinated," she'd begun. "I admit that I was a little appalled. It seemed like such a callous attitude toward life."

"My Warden, you wound me," he'd gasped in mock hurt, his hand covering his heart.

"No, no, Zev. I don't mean it that way. When we met, when I first started talking to you and learning about being an assassin, I was still so raw…"

"I am joking my beautiful Warden. I know how devastated you were. Maker, what you suffered would have broken most people, no?"

"There were so many times I just wanted to… At first I'd get up every morning and pray for the darkspawn to attack so I could just walk into battle and disappear…."

He'd remained silent at first, understanding more than he was willing to admit. Hadn't his own failed attempt on the Grey Warden's been his own attempt to silence the pain that had gripped his soul? "And now?" he murmured against her hair.

"There are people who need assassinating," she'd said, turning to grin at him, a strange little twinkle in her eye.


	3. Chapter 3

***** Months Earlier *****

Zevran had been with the group for only a few weeks when they arrived in Redcliff Village. The Warden had been able to quickly organize the entire village to repel an eminent attack on the village from the nearby castle. Hordes of the undead had been streaming from the castle for many nights attacking the villagers. No one had heard from Arl Eamon or his family for days, and his brother, Bann Teagan, feared the worst.

He'd known she was a skilled rogue, she'd bested him after all, but the way she cut through the undead had been a thing of beauty. Blades flashing, bombs flying, she'd been a killing machine raining hell down on the enemy. That was when he'd begun to really believe she could keep the Crows away…

Inside the castle, though… He remembered the despair in her eyes when they'd encountered the possessed child. There had been no hope for him. She'd refused the Blood Magic ritual from the rogue mage they'd found in the dungeon, the one that had been sent by Loghain to poison the Arl. Isolde, the Arl's wife and the main reason for all the events that transpired, at least that was his personal opinion, had raged against the Warden, begging for her son's life, even at the expense of more people dying. In the end Ryder had knocked the woman out and done what had to be done.

Back at camp, when it was all over, after Alistair had railed at her for killing the Arl's son, after she'd stood there with no expression on her face, eyes blank and unseeing, she'd grabbed her pack and fled into the woods, the Mabari war hound, SerPickles, at her side.

He'd followed, unnoticed, unheard. Far away from their companions, she'd stopped beside a small creek. Sitting on the damp bank, knees drawn up to her chest, she'd quietly sobbed. The dog had tried to offer support, whining and laying at her feet. Before long she grabbed her pack and held it to her face. Muffled screams reached his ears and they didn't stop until she seemed to pass out and collapse forward onto the dog.

How long he watched he didn't know. The dog knew he was there and kept raising his head to look at him. Seeming to take matters into his own paws, the dog left his master and came to where the assassin crouched in the bushes, nudging him toward his human.

Zevran was very experienced with comforting distraught women, offering them the delights of his body as a distraction from their worldly worried. The Warden, however, was so much more... he couldn't even begin to fathom what the child's death had cost her...

In his many years as an assassin, innocent people had died. It had been collateral damage, never intentional. It was something he'd had to come to terms with if he was going to survive, and he was nothing if not a survivor. The Crow's didn't allow their conscience to get in the way of fulfilling a contract.

The Warden, though, had been forced to make a decision, forced to end the life of a child. Possessed by a demon and capable of raising more undead to attack and destroy, she'd made the only decision that would keep the village safe, keep more people from dying. But it had cost her a little of her soul. She didn't even acknowledge his presence when he reached her side and knelt beside her. Broken, eyes too full of so many emotions he couldn't even begin to name, she didn't resist when he picked her up and began the walk back to camp. Almost like a child, she curled into him.

The fire had died down and the rest of their companions had retired to their tents by the time he entered the campsite. As usual, Shale was standing watch. Going directly to the Warden's tent he'd gently placed her on the bedroll already spread on the ground. She'd curled into a tight ball on her side and he'd spread a blanket over her before attempting to leave. The hound, however, had other ideas and sat outside the tent entrance. When the assassin had tried to leave, the dog had simply looked at him and growled one time. Sometime during the night he'd given up trying to sleep sitting up and had stretched out beside the slumbering woman. If he was going to be in trouble for being in the Warden's bed, he should at least make the best of it while he was there.

Zevran dozed lightly through the night. He'd always been a light sleeper and knew every time the hound came in the tent to check on his master. Of course, the smell would have awakened even the dead. The Warden, though, had slept soundly. In the morning she was curled against him, her head now pillowed on his shoulder. Somehow during the night his arm had wound up under the Warden's neck with her face nestled against his neck, her breath fluttering and warm.

He hadn't minded, really, waking up to a beautiful woman curled against his body. Of course they were usually naked… But, it was no hardship, and the Warden was a most delicious creature. But alas, the Warden still had her leathers on, including her boots, as did he. He'd tried once again during the night to return to his own tent, but the dog had refused to allow him out of the tent. He'd given up and decided to just get comfortable.

The Warden began to stir and he was tensed when she opened her eyes and finally focused on him. He'd expected shock, anger, disgust, maybe even repulsion. She was a Ferelden human after all, and he was an elf.

She'd frowned a little in confusion before looking at him and saying, "This usually only happens when I've had way too much to drink. But, at least I'm not naked and covered in syrup, not that I'd have minded, being naked that is, not the covered in syrup thing. I hate sleeping in my armor." With that she'd thrown an arm over his chest and promptly gone back to sleep.

To say he was stunned would have been an understatement. To say he was thoroughly intrigued was no exaggeration. When they had emerged from the tent together later that morning, she'd met everyone's questioning stairs with calmness and maybe just a little bit of challenge.

"Thanks Zevran. Yesterday was difficult for me and I appreciate your being there for me when I needed a friend."

The Templar, Alistair, had started across the clearing, clearly wanting to talk to the Warden, but the Mabari had moved to cut him off. Ryder, however, had placed her hand on the dog's head and commanded him to stay. The Wardens had moved off together and when they returned, the camp readied to travel. When they moved out later on in the morning, she chose to walk with him, and for the first time in many long months, the day was a little brighter, the sun a little warmer…


End file.
